A Single Laugh
by thehaikubandit
Summary: The story of a Jewish Princess, a laugh and half a brick.


AN: Had to write a creative for school expanding on a character in the novel, so here is my small piece.

_The Battle of Stalingrad. There is the constant sound of shots, screams and shells. This is hell, this cold, these screams and these dead. Slumped against a wall is a soldier. He has been shot and red stains the snow that has begun to dust his body. You can see on his face that he knows there is not long. He looks up to the sky and the falling snow. His lips part briefly and he whispers two words, a name. Then his eyes close and he is gone._

Once upon a time there was a boy. He was tall and lanky with blonde hair and eyes of silver. His name was Hans Hubermann Junior and he was twelve years old. He was not particularly fast or strong or smart and his family were closer to poor than rich. He lived in Germany on a street named for heaven with his mother, father and his younger sister Trudy. He was also in love.

She was a dark haired princess with eyes like warm chocolate. Not an actual princess, mind you, but her family was so rich that she might have been. Her father was a tailor but the clothes he made were of silk and his clients could afford his high prices. She never lacked for anything and had many beautiful toys and clothes.

Being so beautiful and so rich Hans was not the only one who loved the princess. In the face of this competition he decided he would make her a gift to show her he loved her. He spent weeks making her a present. Although he could not afford to buy anything he had a lump of wood and a small knife. For Hans, this was enough. A swan, he thought would be perfect. Swans were elegant and beautiful; everything Hans considered his princess to be. He poured his heart, soul and love into the small block of wood and the bird it contained.

He gave her the swan wrapped in some old newspaper he had painted with his father's paints and tied it with some old string. This did probably not help her first impressions of the gift. It would be nice to say that she saw how much love he had put into the swan, that she loved him in return and they lived happily ever after. It would be nice, but it would be a lie. Upon unwrapping the swan she laughed.

That laugh. It haunted him for years and he never forgot it. It was not a kind laugh or a beautiful laugh. It was a taunting mocking laugh. That laugh said: "How dare you, a snivelling little boy love a princess like me? What do you think you are doing?"

She tossed the bird at his feet and turned away, linking arms with her friends. What she did not look back and see was Hans standing broken hearted, tears trickling down his face.

Just over eight years later Hans returned that laugh to her. A lot changed in those eight years.

It was the night of November the 9th, 1938. A night full of broken glass, tears and hatred. Hans was out that night, twenty years old with his new friends and hardened heart. When everything came together he was outside the tailor's shop. In his hand he held half a brick which he flung through a window.

The tailor's family had suffered in those eight years. They were now forced to live above the shop and were woken by the shattering glass. The former princess looked out the window and saw the crowd below. She and her siblings cried with fear as insults and stones flew through the air.

Upon seeing her face in the window Hans laughed. All the pain and heartbreak, all his hatred condensed into one small sound.

In those eight years many things had changed. A small man with a large hatred had come to power in Germany. His words gave the broken hearted Hans something to cling to. The laugh that haunted him was drowned out in a torrent of powerful hatred, marching and shouting. The words of this man took the pieces of Hans's heart and stuck them back together, filling it with a black hatred.

This is why he threw that brick, why he hated his father for being known as "The Jew Painter", why he was always the first to heil, the first to spit or kick and why, in 1940 he joined the army on a path that led to snow and screams.

Hans Hubermann Junior died in that battle as it was drawing to its bloody conclusion. A conclusion that was a long time in coming. He died alone and his body was buried by the snow. At the end of the war he was simply noted as missing in action.

When he died he whispered one final name as though it were a prayer. You may hope it was the name of the princess, that at the end all the hatred was put aside and he remembered the love he once felt.

_The soldier draws his final breath. With his eyes turned towards the dark, snow filled clouds he uses that breath to speak a name. _

_"Mein Fuhrer."_


End file.
